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Gilgamesh Wulfenbach
This article is about the heir to House Wulfenbach. For other uses, see Wulfenbach (disambiguation). ---- |death= |parents= Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, Warrior Queen of Skifander. |relatives= Sister: Zeetha, Daughter of Chump |children= |marital status= single, knows exactly who he wants }} :"What do I have to do! I just took down an entire army of war clanks! And I '''still' get treated like a halfwit child!" '''Gilgamesh Wulfenbach' is heir to an empire that spans most of Europa and is a powerful Spark. Neither factor has made anything easy for him. Story Before the Story When Klaus Wulfenbach returned from parts unknown nearly two decades ago, he carried a young Gil on his back. Gil has never mentioned in-comic and according to an exchange in the print novel ''Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle'' he does not even not know who she is. Gil was raised not as befits a Spark and the heir to an empire, but in secret at the bottom of the social and technological of school aboard Castle Wulfenbach. (Also, see below under Questions and Theories for other things that were probably happening to/with Gil at this time.) Known as Gilgamesh Holzfäller, he with Tarvek and they had a fun time together before a . When he at age 8, Klaus a way to Gil’s spark, as none of his dormitory mates knew of his Sparkiness. Despite this he was still good friends with both Theopholous DuMedd and Sleipnir O'Hara, but his eventual departure to put a strain on their friendship as did the interception of attempted communication between the former classmates, as seen in ''Agatha H and the Airship City''.'' Gil blossomed while attending university in Paris, where he kept the assumed . There he music, friends, enemies. He a little shopping. He even acquired a reputation as a ladies' man, though he never found a girl he During this time he met Tarvek, who was still ignorant of his former friend's true identity, and he Zola and Ardsley Wooster. With his education 'over,' Gil was announced to the world as the Baron's son and heir. For Gil this began a new series of that his father to test his sparkiness and leadership capabilities. The Beetleburg Incident At Transylvania Polygnostic University in Beetleburg, Gil passes Klaus's [[Dihoxulator|test ''du jour]] by seeing through his father's ruse regarding the Dihoxulator. Unfortunately, Professor Tarsus Beetle attacks when his possession of a hive engine is revealed and Gil kills him with one of Beetle's own bombs. A less to the girl of his dreams is hard to imagine than killing her mentor. Though Klaus believes Moloch von Zinzer to be the author of the Search Engine clank, Gil that it is Agatha Clay. Both are taken to Castle Wulfenbach, where Gil investigates his theory by , dancing with her, showing her his mood lighting, and, most winningly, by playing 'house'—or rather —with her. With help from Agatha's Electric Foils and Dingbots, Gil and Agatha destroy the re-activated Beetleburg hive engine together. The thrill of victory inspires a and one of the marriage proposals of all time. Agatha has fled the Castle by the time Gil recovers from getting his . Gil and Bangladesh DuPree try to bring her back, but are tricked into believing that she had already by a rogue clank in the Wastelands. Death Cannot Stop True Love Having known the dead girl less than two weeks, Gil does what any reasonable young man would do: he throws himself night and day into killing every he can find and his late love's adoptive parents, the constructs Punch and Judy. It is this later project that prevents Gil from going to Agatha the moment he learns that she's alive"... by a pack of carnies". In Great Hospital at Mechanicsburg, Klaus's warning that Agatha is really Lucrezia Mongfish and the Other does little to temper Gil's passion. Gil sends Captain Vole to Agatha from the Coffee shop, but this backfires, sort of,Madly, an emissary to kill one's intended is a time-honored Heterodyne courting ritual. when Vole tries to kill her. He is foiled by Agatha throwing "very goot coffee" in his face and clocking him with a monkey wrench. Outside the city, Gil manages to get within sight of Agatha, but he is wounded while calling down lightning from the heavens to defend his father's empire from the war clanks of the Knights of Jove. He makes , though. Taken to Mamma Gkika's place to patched up, Gil surprisingly to Jäger medicine. While recovering from his wounds, Gil his love for Agatha to Zeetha and a Magnificent Hat. Contrary to Klaus's that the green-haired girl has come to Europa to kill Gil, Gil and Zeetha fast friends almost immediately. Gil and Zeetha's budding friendship thrives on a of that could have mistrust. Neither mistrust nor blooms between them, however. Perhaps this is merely because they both Agatha or perhaps not. Either way, they are soon on their way into Castle Heterodyne to help Agatha. Inside Castle Heterodyne As of the start of Volume IX, Gil's party inside the Castle consists of himself, Zeetha, Krosp, Theopholous DuMedd, Sleipnir O'Hara, and The Unstoppable Higgs. Shortly after entering, he is greeted by name by Zola "Heterodyne", who knows him from his time in Paris, though not as the Wulfenbach heir. Judging from her greeting, Gil may have been something of a rebellious youth; Zola felt he was heading for a bad end and while upset, is not surprised find him in Castle Heterodyne. Shortly thereafter, Gil sends the rest of his group all away to find Agatha while continuing to string along Zola and pump her for information, unaware that Agatha is already roaming the castle looking for Gil himself. Agatha finds Gil before the rest of the group find Agatha. Agatha's method of greeting Gil is to pin him (and Zola) under the paw of a mechanical tiger-dog, unable to move or speak. When she eventually lets him get up, a potential tender moment is interrupted by an enraged Silas Merlot in a battle clank. Gil attempts to take out Merlot and gets shot in the left shoulder for his trouble. After Merlot spends some time monologuing and terrorizing Agatha and others in the room, Gil rebounds, pickes up Merlot, battle clank and all, and tosses him across the room in a startling display of enraged strength. Baron Gilgamesh Wulfenbach Following numerous delays and complications, including quarreling constantly with Tarvek and getting himself infected with (and cured of) Hogfarb's Resplendent Immolation, Gil helps Agatha get the Castle mostly repaired. Word then comes that Klaus has been killed during an attack on the Great Hospital, forcing Gil to return to Castle Wulfenbach, only to be met with skepticism from the airship's staff of his identity...were it not for the Magnificent Hat to give it to them straight. When he finally affirms that it is indeed him to Boris, he immediately orders an officer to hide the hat away for good, before DuPree comes by to see it for herself. Gil dismisses her claims as being a mere on her part. Then he accuses Bang of dereliction of duty, forcing her into a tearful explanation of why she was not there to save his father when the Great Hospital collapsed. She was under orders from Klaus to leave, and went straight back to find him, but was unable to see Klaus before the hospital fell in upon itself. Gil proceeds to comfort her, even taking Bang's death threat in stride. Due to the disappearance of Klaus, Boris and the rest of the staff recognize Gil as the new Baron, and state that they await his . Gil is at first uncomfortable with his immediate succession and questions Boris' loyalty to Klaus before asking if they were at least able to find the body. The secretary explains that they were not able to, but adds that he is acting under the missing Baron's direct orders that if there is ever any cause to believe that the latter is dead, Boris is to publicly recognize Gil as Klaus' replacement . When, to no one's real surprise, the Baron reappears alive on board the airship, Gil dispatches Tarvek, Othar and Captain Vole back to the surface, and forcibly doses Bangladesh DuPree with some of Tarvek's anti-revenant formula. She knocks him out, and he awakens to find himself being accused by Klaus of 1. poisoning Bang and 2. being a revenant, though considering that Klaus is a revenant under at least partial control of a copy of Lucrezia, the validity of these charges must be questioned. Klaus eventually shows an imprisoned Gil the amount of forces he is prepared to throw against Agatha, Mechanicsburg, and the now fully-repaired Castle Heterodyne, forcing Gil to allow himself to be subjected to an unknown procedure. It is eventually revealed this involves inserting a copy of the Baron's mind to periodically "possess" Gil in a way similar to what Lucrezia does with Agatha. Gil reappears when Agatha is atop the Castle, preparing to give it the final charge it needs to truly resume full operations. His atypical and intransigent attempt to drag her back to Castle Wulfenbach causes her to have him tossed out of Mechanicsburg by Franz the dragon. Gil makes his way back to Castle Wulfenbach, where Klaus tells his subordinates that he has placed Gil under "control," making him safe to take Klaus's place. Klaus then personally takes the Take five bomb down into Mechanicsburg and activates it. Two and a Half Years After Bomb/Door page After the time-skip caused by the bomb, Agatha (and the reader) learns that Gilgamesh has been engaged in open war with at least one copy of The Other, and found a way to liberate her revenants (or at least allow the ones on Castle Wulfenbach to not respond to her orders.) To make matters worse, Gil is also having to fight the various Spark houses and surrounding empires his father kept in check. As a result of all this, he has lost control of a significant portion of the Empire (though it is expanding again, with various bits and pieces even requesting to re-join), and is concentrating much of his remaining resources on control of the Mechanicsburg Valley, piling enormous amounts of time and effort into an attempt to break through the thorn-hedge around the city, and the time-bubble his father set off. He greatly mourned Agatha after the bomb went off, going so far as to build enormous statues of her, station squadrons of message sentinels for her around the city, and going without sleep for extended periods of time. He has been engaging in diplomatic talks with Martellus von Blitzengaard's family, and is using the man's sister Xerxsephnia von Blitzengaard to deliver messages, while rebuffing her overtures towards a (theoretically) cold-blooded but politically advantageous marriage. He is being hampered by the fact that he is suffering ongoing lack of sleep and mental damage. He is also in constant Stage 2 Madness Place (probably since the sealing of Mechanicsburg). Under duress, he finally explains the Klaus-copy procedure he underwent to (a noticeably not-poisoned) Bang, to her great displeasure. When he learns that Agatha has reappeared, Gil shows up near The Refuge of Storms, chasing Refuge-escapee Violetta on the back of a Great Sky Wurm, accompanied by Bang, Higgs the sailor, and his clank minder Bohrlaikha. He is knocked unconscious by Tweedle's Hand redirecting the lightning from Gil's new zappy stick; the brawl between the two allows Violetta time to escape. When Gil returns to the land of the living after a couple of days Agatha sends a message to him in the form of a monster clank. Toward the end of the message Klaus-in-Gil takes control and smashes the device. Following another unsuccessful to intercept/talk to/capture Agatha, and an unwelcome reminder of Tweedle's expanding power, Gil is joined again by Higgs in a hazardous into the Mechanicsburg time-bubble via a set of jury-rigged "tunnels". The duo are successful in their attempt to extract Vole from the bubble, albeit aging him hundreds of years in the process. During this mission, they converse remotely with Castle Heterodyne, which is able to resist the effects of the time-bubble to an unknown degree. All three of them are unpleasantly surprised to learn that the bubble has attracted the attention of an enormous and quite Hideous Extradimensional Being: Type 1, which is reaching towards the frozen Klaus and his "bomb." The Castle estimates that Gil (or more precisely Agatha) has two years to find a way to undo the bubble before Something Bad Happens. Chasing Agatha Gil then to the Corbettite Depot Fortress of St. Szpac where Agatha has been forced to take refuge, and where Tweedle has already arrived with his own forces. Despite having arrived with a much bigger army (at least after Tweedle's losses to The Beast), Gil is unwilling to incur the kind of trouble that breaking the Corbettite Rule of Sanctuary would bring. Instead, he orders his forces to surround the depot and grab Martellus and/or Agatha if either emerges, and then proceeds inside himself to talk to Agatha under the aegis of the Corbettite Sanctuary. Unfortunately, this again triggers the Klaus-copy inside Gil to take control, but before he/it can do anything to Agatha, he is Sparkily distracted by the procedure which transfers the consciousness of the mortally-wounded Brother Ulm into the Corbettites' new super-train. The process has the unexpected side-effect of temporarily disabling Agatha's locket, allowing the Lucrezia-copy to take control of her body. The two hijackers have a tense conversation before passing out thanks to some drugged cake served by the Corbettites. Gil awakens back in control of his body, and learns that Agatha and Co. have successfully slipped through his cordon and departed. He learns their destination (Paris) from an unexpected source: a Dreen who has been lurking in the Depot's catacombs. The Dreen goes on to say that Gil will be going to Paris himself, but this does not happen immediately: Gil is next seen sparring with Bang and then hearing reports from his agents about a mysterious new Queen of the Dawn who is rapidly bringing chunks of Northern Europa under her sway, and a covert Slaver-Wasp infestation of a remote town. He is also presented with a captured copy of a new miniaturized version of a Hive Engine, expanding his ongoing worries about Lucrezia-copies and Agatha. He his infiltration project in Mechanicsburg, finally managing to reach Tarvek inside the Red Cathedral by precariously tunneling in from deep underneath the frozen city. In the process, his team is able to successfully extract Othar Tryggvassen from the time-field, and Gil manages to convince him to at least temporarily hold off on the Gentlemanly Heroics. They are able to extract Tarvek as well, and cure him of his Tweedle-inflicted poison. For the first time in months or years, Gil leaves the Madness Place, but almost immediately thereafter Tarvek is kidnapped/"rescued" by a raiding party from the Paris-based Immortal Library. An enraged/Sparking-out Gil sets off in pursuit, but is misled by a false trail underground. He is not seen again until he and Bang appear in the English Channel and intercept the airship Mopey Tortoise just in time to save passenger Tarvek from Jaron. Gil then again leaves the Madness Place, and orders the Tortoise's Captain to fly to Castle Wulfenbach, but when Bang covertly tells Tarvek about Klaus's mental alterations, the duo knock out Gil, chain him up and resume course for England. Gil in England Gil eventually wakes up in (refined and elegant) British custody, causing the the Klaus-implant to kick in for a spell and to Tarvek for dealing with Albia. While recovering from this, Gil meets British Spark Trelawney Thorpe for the first time, after long being a fan of her written adventures. Subsequently, Gil and Tarvek are (at first) not allowed to get terribly near Agatha, but are when Krosp arrives with his army aboard a commandeered Wulfenbach airship requesting British asylum for Dimitri Vapnoople. Albia then officially allows both of them to stay in England, at least for the moment, so Tarvek then goes off to be with Agatha and Krosp in the Queen's Society dome, while a distracted Gil tries without much success to make progress on his time-bubble research. Miss Thorpe him out for a day on the town; it is not entirely clear if she is doing this on her own initiative or explicit "distract Gil" type orders from Albia. In either event, she him to see the Royal Collection of Inconvenient Oddities, where he has a discussion with the Collection's curator Hippocrates Brunel regarding the Queen's Mirrors, and then assists in the takedown of a rampaging crocadilian construct released from an Egyptian artifact; he has had previous experience with such artifacts during a visit to Paris. The takedown makes the , as they say, leading to rumors and/or speculations of a romance between him and Ms. Thorpe. Which may end up having some truth to them; the duo next travel far to England's north, where an unsubmerged portion of the country is home to Albia's Henge, the space and mind-bending complex she created after breaking through for a second time. They converse with one of Albia's memory-echoes stored in the site, and everyone learns (or remembers) that Lucrezia was somehow the instigator of the fall of the golden age of the God-Queens. A plan is assembled "off-camera" to immediately remove the Lucrezia-copy from Agatha, but Albia's poking at Gil's mind in the process causes the Klaus-implant to resurface again. He reiterates his unyielding opposition to a Gil-Agatha union, even if the Lu-copy is erased, and notes his awareness and approval of Albia's hope to pair up Gil and Trelawney. Trelawey in turn indicates she's at least willing to entertain the idea. Gil and Trelawney travel to the Queen's Society dome, arriving just as Tarvek and Co. begin the procedure to remove Lu. The duo urge a delay and modification of the removal equipment, wanting to extract and interrogate the Lu-copy instead of simply deleting it.This plan is agreed to, but Agatha convinces the Klaus-overlay that they need Gil present mentally, and so leaves the room alone. Tarvek then gets a resurfaced Gil to "help" by putting on the various cumbersome bits of gear that instead will delete the Baron-copy, but when he calls Agatha to come back in and auto-trigger the copy again, she has disappeared. Tarvek nevertheless manages to get the overlay's "attention" by mentioning Othar, and activates the device, evidently successfully deleting the Baron from Gil's mind, leaving his body only slightly singed. It turns out Agatha has been briefly kidnapped, but when she's brought back to the extraction site, the Lucrezia-copy takes control and makes adjustments to the extraction machine, forcing Gil and Tarvek into a complete re-build. While they are doing this, Lu figures out how to ascend to Queen-hood and does so, but she is stalled and weakened enough by the rest of Agatha's entourage that she can be forced into the new machine, whereupon Gil throws the switch, and the extraction process is successfully completed. What Kind of Madboy Personality For a tyrant-to-be, Gil is notably easygoing most of the time. His breakthrough device is non-destructive. At the time he first meets Agatha, he has invented , but he has found time an entire Mechanical Orchestra. His personal library reflects a certain . In the heat of battle, he a fish ( ), which he later . The amount of effort he puts into resurrecting the adoptive parents of a dead girl who only kissed him once proves that he is more than a little bit of a romantic. He would apparently make a pretty evil overlord. That said, young Master Gilgamesh is unquestionably ruthless. He is emotionally by killing Tarsus Beetle. He does not hesitate to a few dozen people outside Mechanicsburg. He motivates a friend to help him by promising to his homeland if he does not. He's exactly the who could "burn down people — women and children" if it became necessary. All in all, Gil may be a pretty accurate of a young Klaus. He is also amazingly merciful; even when confronted with a former associate who has plans to kill him, returning the favor is . However, as this was due to his entirely mistaken belief that she is a actually a foolish yet harmless pawn , it may be the last time he does such a thing. In addition to his already formidable intellect and ingenuity, Gil seems to have a knack for feigning ignorance, but he does his best at this whenever he is . This strategy not only causes his enemies to underestimate him, an often fatal mistake on their part, but also diverts suspicion away from himself. This behavior also goads his opponents into revealing inadvertently, much to his advantage. Gil's Spark Gil is quite a strong spark. He "broke through" when he was , the known. When introduced, his creations are ambitious in concept, but almost all have been deployed while still in the prototype stage. Only his music box functioned without fault. Once inspired , however, his talent proved truly outstanding; he . Like his father, his Spark is seemingly all-encompassing; though his breakthrough creation was a construct, he is a talented electrical and mechanical engineer, and when we first meet him he is fondly working on the only heavier-than-air flying machine seen in the series.A fixed-wing flyer seen early on lacks a propeller and appears to be a lighter-than-air design. Repeating elements in his sparky style include lightning lightning stick and insectsZoingThe Works depicts him with an insect . Even Klaus himself notes how powerful his son really is, stating that if Gil would ever ally himself with his enemies (notably The Other), the world itself would potentially be in great peril. Physical Abilities Gil's physical prowess is nothing short of amazing as he has demonstrated several times incredible displays of strength. One notable feat was Silas Merlot's battle clank across an entire room with his bare hands moments after Merlot him in the shoulder; only then did he succumb to the . (See below under Questions and Theories for further discussion of this.) He is also a formidable combatant skilled in fencing and , as well as being able to hold his own against Zeetha in a (although she wasn't exactly holding back) and an enraged Bang bent on him for her crush off the Wulfenbach airship. Creations * Zoing, a buglike construct; " ." * a fixed-wing aircraft that really well * a prototype lightning generator with a glacial * a mechanical orchestra * a fencing clank that learns from past encounters, but "suffers" * repairs to Punch and Judy, including giving the mute Punch a voice * a clank for * Atmospheric Ionization engine that generates massive directed lightning strikes but when used * a "lightning stick" The Works The Gilgamesh Wulfenbach card in The Works lists the epithets Hero, Villain, and Spark. It depicts a large insect (perhaps a relative of Zoing?) on the back of his hand apparently speaking to him. Questions and Theories *Will Gil become a benevolent ally or a despotic tyrant? *Who is Gil's ? ** When Gil turns down the title of Baron, So, presumably, at least one of his parents must be royalty... *Why would someone with green hair who speaks Skiff Gil? *What is Gil's relationship with Zeetha? Socially, that's one question. Genetically, they share a paternal parent. *What was Zoing, Gil's breakthrough creation, intended to solve? **Perhaps childhood loneliness? **The investigation into Gil's true parantage with Tarvek seemed to happen when they were both about 8. The trauma of being forced to betray his only friendmay have been the trigger. ***On the matter of Gil's true parentage, what the heck is up with that? Tarvek investigated further and found that Gil's true father was Petrus Teufel, a murderous spark whose personal death toll is only rivaled by The Other. Yet nowhere is the revelation mentioned on this page and everyone in the comic is acting like this revalation never took place. I can't see anywhere in the comic where it goes on to say "Nope, Tarvek was wrong, he actually is the Baron's son". Is there something I'm missing? Is Gil the Baron's son or Petrus Teufel's? This was never made clear to me. ****One, the story opens with Baron Wulfenbach treating Gil as his son. Two, I assumed that the records showing Gil to be the son of the infamous Petrel Teufel were a deep cover so that Gil could spy on the Barons charges with true impunity. ****And in the very next page, he says "He's the Baron's son! It's so obvious! Of course!" *Why does Gil respond to ? What does Klaus know about Jäger medicine and what has he done with that knowledge? What was by Mamma Gkika, and why was it there? (A medical device, and Mamma Gkika put it there to diagnose/fix Gil.) *Since Gil's , almost everybody's asking: Is Gil a construct, or was it just an after-effect of the Jägerdraught? (The novel ''Agatha H. and the Voice of the Castle'' gives a semi-canonical answer: Gkika reveals that, mostly unknown to Gil, Klaus spent a great deal of time during Gil's childhood physically improving his son via unspecified laboratory procedures.) *In both physical and mental terms, is that really Gil in Bangladesh's ? Category:Wulfenbach Category:Characters from Castle Wulfenbach Category:Sparks Gilgamesh Wulfenbach Gilgamesh Wulfenbach Gilgamesh Wulfenbach Category:Zola's Adventures